Quote from andrewjsmithson on Mar. 31, 2005 at 12:49 PM
Quote from carligula on Mar. 30, 2005 at 3:43 PM
Quote from andrewjsmithson on Mar. 29, 2005 at 6:05 PM
if anyone hasn't heard it, i highly recommend their record, Silent Alarm.
...or just listen to any of your Gang of Four records.
i don't have any gang of four records. furthermore, if we take this view of music to its logical conclusion, we shouldn't listen to anything ever again. we should just give up, because all music owes something to something else. we should forget the features, because the talking heads already made some music awhile back. the comparison isn't any more or less valid--bloc party doesn't sound any more like gang of four than anything else going around at the moment. i think it most likely that you read that somewhere, from some lazy journalist making a tired, cynical argument, or heard somebody else say it who didn't know what they were talking about. i mean, have you even heard the band? what, is ben kweller a trailblazing artist, doing something that a million singer-songwriter types have done a million times already? hell no he isn't. it's the same formulaic stuff...but does that make it any less valid? hopefully not, or like i said, we should just give up on music.
Your "logic" ignores the difference between influence and emulation and, therefore, I think your conclusions are too extreme. Here's how music works as I see it-- you either have bands 1) emulating their favorite bands, 2) bands trying (many times in vain) to combine musical styles to create an all new sound that people actually like and 3) bands who take their influences as a stepping stone to evolving in a new direction. Of course, some bands can't be put into one of the categories and I won't argue that they are mutually exclusive.
Aside from this forum, the first and only thing I read about Bloc Party was on Grimey's website. It said, "Never since Gang of Four has a band been so political..." I found a live clip on their website and thought "never since Gang of Four has a band sounded so much like Gang of Four". From the little I've heard from both bands, I would categorize them as #1 and The Features as #3. If you think The Features sound as much like Talking Heads as Bloc Party sounds like Gang of Four, then I obviously need to dig deeper into the Talking Heads catalogue.
I will admit that Ben Kweller probably fits best into category #1. But I challenge you to show me a debut album (by a teenager nonetheless) that is so saturated with great pop songs that convey the spectrum of emotion that Sha Sha does.
You can argue it's all a matter of degree, but if a band isn't bringing anything new to the table (like I believe the features are) or at the very least doing a much better job of it (like I believe BK is doing), I'd rather just stick to the original.
Daigle is all we need to make the night complete
